Picture this: you’re on vacation, you can wake up anytime and have a champagne breakfast, then happily charter a private jet to explore the local islands. Welcome to DINK’s fantasy world – dual income, no kids.
First coined in the ‘yuppy’ days of the late 1980s, the term recently exploded back onto social media as millennial couples provided an inside look into their luxurious child-free lifestyles—and now new research backs up that it really does pay to be a dink.
According to the Federal Reserve’s Consumer Finance Surveychildless couples have the highest net worth of all other types of family structures.
In 2022, the median net worth of couples without children was about $399,000, which was more than $100,000 higher than in 2019 and about $150,000 higher than that of couples with children.
Meanwhile, couples with children – who have the second-highest net worth of all types of family structures – have a net worth of $250,600, according to the Survey of Consumer Finances.
Although the survey did not specify the couple’s employment status, the sky-high price employment rate Among working-age Americans, there is a strong indication that the majority may be in two-income households.
Couples without children don’t make more money…
Childless couples are showing off how they’re spending the money they’ve saved by delaying or avoiding starting a family on TikTok, where the #Dink hashtag currently has 296.2 million views.
Despite being together for 12 years, @kagenbrooks She and her partner had put off plans to have children because, as she revealed, they were traveling the world, partying and spending money on themselves.
But don’t be fooled into thinking that DINKs just make more money because they have more time to devote to their careers instead of having and raising children.
In fact, according to the Federal Reserve, the average income of couples with children is about $9,000 higher than that of couples without children: Couples with children have a median pre-tax household income of $110,250, while couples without children have a median income of $110,250. couples took home an average of $101,610 last year.
…but having a baby is really expensive
Research shows that although couples with children make more money, their net worth is lower because they carry more debt than couples without children.
Simply put, the cost of luxury vacations and designer lifestyles that come with being a DINK doesn’t compare to the financial burden of having a baby.
Child care alone — which averages about $10,600 per child per year — consumes about a quarter of parents’ household income. This does not take into account other factors such as the need for larger properties and a larger population to feed.
In fact, Federal Reserve research shows that having a baby adds about $70,000 to a couple’s debt burden: Taking into account loans, credit cards, and mortgages, a childless couple will have about $100,000 in debt by 2022, but with With the child, the couple’s debt load soared to $168,000.
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